Run by journalists and backed by readers, Hong Kong Free Press is a non-profit, English-language news source seeking to unite critical voices on local and national affairs.
HKFP teamed up with Fallout Media for our 2018 fundraiser video.
The Chinese state news agency Xinhua may have purchased followers on Twitter, according the co-founder of TwitterAudit, a tool designed to detect fake users on the popular social media platform.
An audit conducted last May on the “@XHNews” English Twitter feed suggested that only 11 per cent of the news agency’s followers were real. The TwitterAudit.com tool sampled 5,000 of Xinhua’s 1.56 million Twitter followers, basing the score on how active and established the agency’s followers were.
It is possible that Xinhua purchased followers at some point in an attempt to appear more legitimate. In response to emailed questions, David Caplan, co-founder of TwitterAudit, wrote that “it is easy to purchase followers, just search Google. Lots of sites sell them.”
By Hiram Liu, Claire Li, Tom Grundy & Lukas Messmer
It has been a tough year for press freedom in Hong Kong with Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Al-Jazeera all reporting on the declining state of media freedoms in the city.
There were six attacks on journalists in the past year, advertisers have been withdrawing from media critical of the establishment and HouseNews – a popular liberal news website – was forced to close this summer after its owner was threatened. Late last year, a new television broadcaster, HKTV, was denied a free-to-air licence – mass protests ensued as demonstrators complained that the government’s decision was a political one. The Hong Kong Journalists Association recently stated that it has been “the darkest year in decades” for media freedom as media owners become fearful of harming business interests in the mainland.
Diversity without plurality
Though Hong Kong is home to a wide range of print media titles, there is a deficit in terms of political plurality. There is a surplus of publications on the ‘pro-establishment’ side – some of which are direct mouthpieces of the Chinese Communist Party. Newspapers such as Wen Wei Po, Sing Tao, Oriental Daily, The Sun and Ta Kung Pao – which are supportive of pro-Beijing viewpoints – are balanced only by the Apple Daily, a tabloid, on the opposing ‘pro-democracy’ end of spectrum. The South China Morning Post and Ming Pao occupy the middle-ground, albeit with an increasing slant towards Beijing.
A list of my favourite Android apps, kicking off with the only two paid apps I have installed.
BeyondPod (paid app) – For reliability and functionality, this podcast manager beats all of the free alternatives (including bare-bones and buggy Google Listen). Subscribe to your favourite audio feeds via Google Reader and this app wakes up at a set time, connects to your wifi and downloads the latest podcasts from the last 24-hours. Click for a list of my favourite podcasts.
Swiftkey (paid app) – Swiftkey is fast, smart and learns your typing habits and colloquialisms. This replacement keyboard for the stock Android one makes inputting text a lot less painstaking.
Listed here are a selection of my favourite Chrome browser extensions.
Ad-Block – The most popular Chrome extension, with over 2 million users. Blocks ads all over the web.
Bookmark Sentry – A bookmark scanner that checks for duplicate and bad links.
Chrome Gestures – Allows you to navigate pages, back and forth, by holding down your right mouse button and drawing a line. Speeds up web browsing very effectively once you’re in the habit.
A comprehensive alphabetical collection of almost 500 unusual, weird, wonderful and interesting Wikipedia articles, adapted from a list by Ray Castader on Reddit. Wikipedia also has its own list of usual entries.